For our current production of Ex*Pgirl at City Tech (which opens tonight), we needed a rolling staircase with chasing lights. The unit has to be spun downstage and quickly placed and we felt that a multicable solution would have been bulky and unweildy. The solution? City Theatrical's excellent SHoW DMX system. (Oh, and a CNC router to cut the piece--I'll leave that to our TD, John McCullough, to explain).

There are 33 lights in the unit, 11 on each step. Lighting Designer Lucrecia Briceno came up with a circuiting pattern, and I laid out the system and got the parts ordered up. A group of dedicated students did the wiring:

Here's some video of the finished product:

And, if you're in NYC, stop by today at 1pm, 186 Jay Street Brooklyn, Voorhees Theatre, for a demo!

Control Geek

I'm John Huntington, Professor of Entertainment Technology, sound engineer, and author of the book Show Networks and Control Systems. This site covers entertainment technology, severe weather, photography, and anything else that I find interesting.